


desde allí se veía el rostro seco de Castilla, como un océano de cuero

by Chash



Series: todo lo que me pasa [3]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canon Compliant, F/M, POV Outsider, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 21:45:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14506104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chash/pseuds/Chash
Summary: Madi wakes up in another world.





	desde allí se veía el rostro seco de Castilla, como un océano de cuero

**Author's Note:**

> I see this as the end of this series, but as always, sometimes the muse hits me. But we're getting new canon tonight, so I assume other things will take over my brain.
> 
> Title is still from "Explico Algunas Cosas" by Pablo Neruda and means "from there, you could see the dry face of Castile, like an ocean of leather."
> 
> Finally, I don't like to toot my own horn, but it's a great poem and I really hate the most common English translation; I did my own a few years ago, which you can find [here](http://ponyregrets.tumblr.com/post/117424210519/i-explain-some-things).

Not to be a jerk or anything, but as far as Madi’s concerned, Clarke’s first statement about this weekend should have been “I traveled to another dimension.”

Because, yeah, okay, she and Bellamy hooked up, fine. Obviously Madi is happy for them, but it’s not really _news_ news. “I started dating the guy you’ve known I was going to date since the first time you met him” is about as surprising as hearing that _The Simpsons_ got renewed for another season. Madi was sure it was going to happen, it was just a matter of when.

Meanwhile, Clarke didn’t even mention the alternate reality thing, which means that when Madi wakes up in a moving vehicle, she assumes she’s been kidnapped.

That happens, right? It’s a thing. Kids wake up in unmarked white vans, being taken somewhere. No one misses orphans.

She’s under a pile of what looks like fur blankets, fully dressed, but not in her own clothes. It looks like a dog ate the entire stock of a Hot Topic and threw it up, and Madi got to dress herself from the results.

But, honestly, she’s kind of working it.

Looking around further, she decides that whatever she’s in definitely isn’t an unmarked white van. It’s old and lived in, possibly literally, and she wonders if she got taken by mistake. Maybe this is some parent who lives out of their car and had their kid taken away by the state, and they grabbed her from the group home by accident.

Maybe if she explains that, they’ll let her go.

They’re not in the city anymore, which is worrying. She can see trees outside, and bright sunshine, with no signs of civilization in sight. They aren’t moving too quickly, so she could probably jump out, but where would she _go_? She has no idea where she is or how she got here. Hitchhiking home is an option, but she doesn’t hear any other cars.

It’s really quiet, now that she thinks about it.

“Madi? Are you up?”

The noise startles her out of her thoughts, and she whirls to see a woman in the driver’s seat, her head cocked questioningly. The car has stopped moving, and the silence is even louder now, the deafening kind of silence.

“Clarke?” 

It _is_ Clarke, there’s no question of that, but she looks different too. Her hair is shorter, and she’s dressed like kind of a badass, honestly. Madi mostly sees her in work clothes, but she’s also seen her closet. Clarke doesn’t own that jacket. Clarke probably can't even _imagine_ that jacket.

But it's got to be her. It's not like anyone could be disguised as Clarke. And even if they could, why would they bother?

So she climbs into shotgun. “Where are we going? Why did you take me?”

“Take you?” asks Clarke, sounding confused. “Take you from where?”

She sounds so genuinely baffled that Madi doesn’t know what to say. Her throat closes up on this strange hurt. Clarke is lying to her, or at least playing dumb. Clarke isn’t supposed to be like this. Clarke’s the adult she _trusts_.

“Wait,” she says, before Madi has come up with an answer. “You don’t know where you are?” 

She shakes her head.

“What year is it?”

It’s about the last question she expected. “What?”

“I might know what’s going on. I just need you to tell me what year it is.”

“Twenty-eighteen.”

She nods, as if this was the answer she was expecting, but not the one she wanted. “And you live in—foster care?”

“Yeah. You know all this,” she adds. Panic is growing in her throat, clawing at her. This isn't supposed to happen.

Clarke rubs her face. “Yeah, I know, but—this is all going to sound insane, so I need you to just listen to me. First, we need to get the rover hidden and get something to eat. We want to lie low today. Can we do that, and then I'll explain?”

It does sound kind of insane, but Clarke is so serious and concerned. And she doesn't have any better ideas right now. If Clarke went off the deep end, she still needs to come up with a plan for dealing with that. She’s not in danger yet; she can play along.

“Yeah,” she says. “We can do that.”

Clarke pulls the rover off the path—and that’s all it is, a path, not even close to a road—and the two of them cover it in branches and leaves. Clarke gets what look like home-made granola bars, dried fruit and nuts mashed together, out of her bag and Madi makes a face.

“That’s what we’re eating?”

“Yeah, I know it’s not what you’re used to,” Clarke says, with a small smile. “But it’s what I’ve got. You need to eat something.”

"Will you tell me what's going on?"

"I'm still trying to figure out how," she admits. "It's--I guess the simplest thing to tell you is that I'm not your Clarke, and this isn't your time. Maybe not even your world? I don't know. All I know is four days ago, this same thing happened to me. I woke up in an apartment I'd never seen, with my best friend I haven't seen in six years."

"You haven't seen Bellamy for six years?" Madi asks. It's obviously not the most important takeaway, but it's the easiest to deal with. "Where is he?"

"In space, I hope."

" _Space_?"

"Eat your breakfast," Clarke says, gentle. "I'll tell you what happened."

The story sounds completely unbelievable. She's been thrust centuries into the future, one of two survivors of a second apocalyptic event. Clarke found her, hiding in the same place she'd hidden for her whole life, avoiding people who wanted to take her and make her a leader because of her blood.

"My _blood_?" she demands.

"It's called nightblood," Clarke says. She pulls a knife out and cuts her own arm, just a small, shallow cut, and Madi sees the blood well up, thick and black. "I don't know the whole origin. It's become kind of a legend, I think--people forgot how it started. It increases your tolerance for radiation, and let you interact with--some artificial intelligence stuff. It's not that important. On the ground, if you were born with nightblood, you could be the Commander."

"But you're not from the ground. You're from space." That doesn't sound plausible either.

"Yeah. I wasn't born with nightblood. We manufactured it, to see if I could survive the radiation. I was the test case."

"And you could."

"I didn't actually know that, when I stayed. We couldn't do the test. But it was the only way I could save my friends. I couldn't have done anything else."

"And they're still in space. Bellamy and Raven and everyone else."

"As far as I know. They should have come down a year ago. I don't know if they can't make it down, or something happened, or--" She looks away, and Madi does too, guilt flooding her mouth for asking. Six years feels like an eternity, such a long time to be alone on the ground, wondering if they were the last two people in the entire world.

Clarke manages a smile. "I got to see some of them when I was in your world. That was--nice. Even if I never see them again here, at least I got to talk to them again."

"So--what happens to me?"

"You stay here with me for a day. My Madi saw your Clarke when she came here, so I hope she'll figure out what's going on and get in touch with the other me." She makes a face. "Sorry, this is confusing to talk about."

Madi shakes her head. "I got it. So--there's going to be another me? I won't just disappear?"

"Not if it's like what happened to me. I'm just guessing, though. This is new for me too. But as far as I know, you spend a day here, my Madi spends a day in your world, and when we wake up tomorrow, things are back to normal."

"And we remember."

"Yeah."

"And my Clarke _didn't tell me_."

This Clarke smiles. "Would you have believed her?"

"Maybe not," she admits. "But she told me she and Bellamy are dating, like that was the most exciting thing that happened to her this weekend! Come on."

"That might have been the most exciting thing for her. She and Bellamy are dating now?" she asks, with this tone that is trying for casual and completely failing.

"Yeah."

"Good."

"I guess if you and your Bellamy haven't seen each other for six years, you're not really like that."

"We're not like anything right now," Clarke says, looking up at the sky like she'll be able to find Bellamy up there. "But--I hope we're going to have a chance to figure it out." 

*

Madi wouldn't be able to say why she believes this other Clarke, or even that this _is_ another Clarke. Maybe it's the evidence in front of her eyes--wherever they are, it's _not_ Boston, and doesn't feel like anywhere close--or maybe it's just that the whole thing is so ridiculous, it seems stupid to lie about it. Clarke doesn't know everything about her world and doesn't pretend to, but the stuff she doesn't know makes _sense_. She could be lying, but it just seems so pointless. If Clarke wanted to kidnap her, she wouldn't have to go to this much trouble.

And there are the weapons. Clarke, in her world, is pro-gun-control, passionate about how the second amendment doesn't mean AR-15s are a basic human right. This Clarke has a truck full of weapons, and she talks about them as a simple fact of life. There are people who are out to get them, and they have to protect themselves. 

It does feel like a whole other world.

"Who are the people who are out to get us?" she asks Clarke. They’re checking traps, which is another thing she cannot imagine her Clarke doing.

"I don't know, exactly. They came down on a transport that said they were prisoners, and they want to shoot first and ask questions later."

"Isn't that what you want too?"

"I was going to watch first and try to talk later," says Clarke. "But they tried to kill you." 

Madi shivers a little at her matter-of-fact tone. This is a world where people trying to kill her is normal, routine. Something they have to deal with. Something Clarke doesn’t hesitate to deal with with deadly force.

"So now you're going to kill them?"

"Unless I come up with another plan. I don't want to," she adds. "But it's about survival. They aren't interested in making peace. But we're not going to worry about that today."

Her voice is bright and forced, but Madi appreciates it. She can accept that there's a version of her that grew up like this, prepared to fight for her life at the drop of a hat, but even though Madi considers herself a fairly scrappy survivor, she's never had to survive like _this_. Scrounging for food, keeping herself safe from bad foster parents, that’s all fine. But she never thought about killing someone deliberately, or even in self defense. It never got that bad, because it always felt like there must be a safe place somewhere, if she could just get to it.

Here, there was a safe place, and it's gone now. All she and Clarke have is each other.

"What are we going to do?"

"Lay low," says Clarke. "Relax. We can take the day off from fighting. As long as we stay quiet and no one comes out here, we should be fine. They've been looking for us, but they're trying to establish their home base, too. Once that's done--" She swallows, looks away. "If it wasn't all open ground between us and the bunker, I'd just go there, even if we couldn’t open it. But even with the rover, we're sitting ducks. We need the trees for coverage, and to muffle the sound of the motor."

"But you think we can just stay put and be okay?"

"I hope so. We're pretty close to the edge of the valley, I'm hoping they won't come out this far."

It seems like a lot to hope for, but Clarke knows better than Madi how it is out here. And it is just one day.

"Can we see what it looks like outside of the valley?" she finally asks. "The desert. I've never seen one."

"I don't think it's anything like other deserts," Clarke says. "It's not like anything. But yeah, we should be able to take a look."

It felt like a fairly simple request, but Clarke is careful and methodical. It's not news, of course--Madi's only known her for a few months, but her Clarke is the same way. She doesn't take risks she doesn't have to, but in their world, that means making sure she triple-checks her documentation to take Madi out for the day, not that she equips herself with an arsenal of weapons and checks their path in the scope of her gun every few yards. It doesn't even feel like paranoia, and that only makes it worse.

She wonders what happens, if you die in an alternate universe. Would it last? Would she remember doing it? Would the other Madi die too? Would she survive at home, and this girl whose body she's borrowing would just be--

It's going to be fine. Clarke is going to keep her safe. Clarke's clearly been keeping her safe for a long time. All she has to do is listen and be careful, and they'll get through this.

But when Clarke says, "Wait," her heart still stops. She's never been so scared in her entire life.

She can hear the voices, now that she’s listening, but can’t make out the words. Clarke gets her hidden, tucked under the brush, and hunkers down next to her, the sight of the gun trained in the direction of the sound, ready to fire.

And then, to Madi's horror, she drops it.

"Wha--"

Clarke puts her finger to her mouth, and they just listen in silence.

"--quite a distraction," says a woman.

"Not sure it was on purpose," says a man.

"It's not like Octavia needs an excuse to start shit," another adds. The name _Octavia_ snags in her memory, but she can't place it, aside from Octavia Spencer. It would be weird if _she_ was here.

"And we didn't know how long it would take us to get here," says the woman. “They couldn’t have coordinated.”

"We're still not there," says a fourth voice, and Clarke breathes, "Bellamy," just as Madi recognizes him too. 

"This is a pretty big valley,” he continues, “and Clarke's not on the radio. It could take us a while to find her."

They come out of the woods a second later, Bellamy in the lead, flanked by three unfamiliar people. He mostly looks like the Bellamy she knows, the same way Clarke does, not exactly the same, but unmistakable. His hair isn't quite as messy, and his beard is a little fuller, and he has the same strange sharpness to his features that Clarke does.

They're survivors, here. It shows on their faces.

"Wait here," Clarke murmurs to Madi. Her eyes are still on the new group. "They don't know about you yet, and if anyone sees us--just stay hidden for a second."

"Do you know all of them?"

"Yeah. They're friends."

She still doesn't move, and Madi realizes she's frozen. What would it even be like, to go six years without seeing someone? What would you say to them?

And she did see _a_ Bellamy. Maybe she got some of it out already. But that might not make it easier.

"One of us should go," Madi says. They're still chatting, talking about the distraction Octavia is apparently providing, whether deliberately or not, and whether or not one of the guys, Murphy, still has a chance with someone named Emori. "I can, if you want." 

Clarke's laugh is soft, a release of tension. "They're looking for me," she says. "It's fine."

All four of them turn at the sound of Clarke rising, and two pull guns up, trained on her. She comes out with her hands up, slow and careful, taking no chances. It would really suck, if one of them accidentally shot her _now_. It's what would happen in a play, one of the ones Bellamy likes, where the hero is mistaken for his worst enemy and dies in the moment of his greatest triumph. 

But that's not what happens. They stop in stunned silence, and for a moment everything is frozen, like the world is on pause, until the Murphy guy says, "Oh, there she is."

Bellamy is staring, slack-jawed, and the woman nudges his back with her elbow. He trips a little, staggers forward, and keeps going, wrapping Clarke up in his arms like he's going to have to be forcibly pried off her. And Clarke is clinging back just as hard, her face buried in his neck. Madi thinks they're speaking, but she can't make out the words. They're probably not for her anyway. It doesn't really feel like her moment, if she's honest; the other Madi has probably been waiting for this. She should be here for it.

"There's supposed to be someone with her, isn't there?" says the woman, turning her attention deliberately away from Clarke and Bellamy.

"Yeah, that's what alternate Bellamy said."

That's what gets Clarke's attention. She jerks out of Bellamy's arms, looking at Murphy and the two people whose names Madi still doesn't know. Bellamy doesn't quite let her go, but Madi wouldn't really expect him to. After six years, she wouldn't.

"Alternate Bellamy?" she asks.

"He knew you, so I figured it wouldn't be a total surprise," says the unidentified man. "You got to go to the other world too, right?"

Clarke's attention shifts back to Bellamy. "You went?"

"Day before yesterday, yeah. That's, uh--" He clears his throat. "We didn't know you were _alive_ , Clarke. Not until they told us."

"I didn't know you were alive either. When did you--" She stops. "Wait. I've got the alternate Madi here. Madi?"

She pulls herself out of the bushes, self-conscious with all eyes on her. 

But Bellamy smiles. "You must be having a weird day, huh?"

"It's been a lot, yeah."

"But you know me, right?"

"Yeah. No one else."

"This is Murphy, Miller, and Echo," he says. "We're here to--I don't actually know."

Clarke bites the corner of her mouth. "You don't know?"

"We knew you were alive, so we came to get you," he says, like it's as simple as that. It probably is. "But we don't have a great place to go back to."

"But you got the bunker open? Octavia's alive? My mom?"

"Most of them made it, yeah. It was bad down there, Clarke. The things that happened--"

"We've all done things to survive that we wish we hadn’t. You know about Eligius?"

"That's the other ship? Yeah, we know about them. We stole some of their fuel to get down. There's a larger ship in the air, but everyone up there is still in cryo-freeze."

Clarke glances back at Madi, clearly torn between her need to catch up with Bellamy and her desire to not abandon Madi. If she had a better idea of what was happening, Madi wouldn't mind getting the full update, but she's already way too overwhelmed. She doesn't want to have to care about other ships and what happened under the ground. She shouldn't have to.

"Me and Nathan will take the kid," says Murphy. "You guys can figure out what we're doing next."

"You know I still have a boyfriend, right?" Nathan/Miller asks. "You can stop flirting."

"Where's the fun in that? Come on, Madi."

"Where exactly are we going?" Madi asks, wary. "Clarke said--"

"Everyone is on the other side of the valley, busy with Octavia. We'll keep you safe," Murphy adds, with a sincere tone Madi already feels is kind of out-of-character. He's got one of those faces that always looks a little shifty. "Don't worry."

"Unless you want to listen to those three talk strategy," Miller adds. "Trust me, it gets boring."

"I missed you too, Miller," Bellamy says, automatic. His smile softens when he sees Madi. "Sorry, I want to get to know you too."

"It's cool. You can get to know the other me tomorrow. She's the one you're going to live with, right?"

"I want to get to know both of you,” he protests, making her smile.

"Figure out where we're going," Murphy tells him, a reminder. "We've got this."

Clarke glances at her too, but Madi waves her off. She's just as glad to get to hang out with Murphy and Miller, even if, as it turns out, they don't know much about entertaining kids.

"Do you know how to fire a gun?" Murphy asks.

Miller glares at him. "Seriously?"

"What? Maybe she doesn't."

"Maybe she doesn't want to know."

"I don't," says Madi. "Sorry."

"That's cool. Do you know any games?"

"Do you guys know MASH?" she asks, mostly to see if she can actually get them to play. Her Clarke showed her once, and it’s not her favorite thing or anything, but it’s good for a laugh. 

"Nope," says Miller. "But you could teach us."

He has a sheet of paper and a pen, so they use those to establish that Murphy is going to marry someone named Indra, have seventeen children, drive a Prius, work as a dog food taster, and live in an apartment.

"Honestly, I'll take that," says Murphy. "Is a Prius good? It sounds badass. Do Miller next. I'm thinking he and Kane would make a really cute couple."

"You know I don't know any of these people, right?" Madi asks, but she's smiling. There's an underlying tension in everything, this feeling of putting on a show of normalcy, but it could be worse. At least they're trying.

Echo comes over to join them, and Murphy cocks his head at her. "That going okay?"

"About as well as you'd expect."

"Yeah?" asks Miller. "What do you think I'm expecting?”

Echo huffs. "I was making him feel guilty, so I left. But all they're doing is talking about Eligius and resource allocation, he doesn't have anything to feel bad about."

Miller takes pity on Madi. "Our Bellamy and Echo broke up a couple days ago. Right before he got sent to your world. They’re still kind of weird.”

"Good thing I did it when I did," says Echo. "If he'd found out she was alive before that, he probably would have asked me to marry him, just to prove that it wasn't going to change anything."

"Sounds about right," says Murphy. He claps her on the shoulder. "Madi's got a game that can tell you who you're actually going to marry."

She raises her eyebrows. "Oh?"

Murphy and Miller do most of the work for Echo's list of potential spouses, leaving Madi free to watch Clarke and Bellamy out of the corner of her eye. Clarke keeps glancing over to make sure that she's still around and occupied, which is nice--Clarke takes her responsibilities seriously, and this Madi is obviously her top priority--but most of her focus is on Bellamy, and she’s watching him with this smile playing around her lips, like she's can’t get over just sharing space with him again.

"Hey, Echo needs cars," says Murphy, and Madi pulls her attention back to the task at hand.

Clarke and Bellamy finish up their talk, apparently satisfied that they can wait until tomorrow to try to get back to the rest of their people, which is a relief to Madi. Instead, they keep going to the edge of the valley, letting Madi take in the huge expanse of nothingness surrounding them for as far as the eye can see.

She hopes this isn’t her world; she doesn’t want it to turn out this way.

They stay there for a few minutes, but it’s not actually interesting. She glances at Clarke. “I’m good. That’s all I needed to see.”

“You sure?” Madi nods, and Clarke does too, turning her attention to the others. "So, Bellamy said you guys hadn't seen natural bodies of water for six years. You want to go swimming?"

Madi thought pool parties were be something adults eventually grew out of, but apparently six years of, according to Murphy and Miller, "the worst showers ever" really changes your priorities. Clarke lags back with Madi, and Bellamy does too, but the other three throw their clothes away with abandon, jumping into the water like they've never been anywhere better.

"You're not going in?" Clarke asks Bellamy.

"You're not either.” Madi thinks it's supposed to sound like he's teasing, but to her it mostly comes across like he's anxious about letting Clarke too far out of his sight.

"Madi?" she asks.

Apparently it's on her to get this moving along. "I could swim."

It's a little weird swimming in clothes instead of a bathing suit, but it would be worse to strip down to her underwear in front of a bunch of strangers. Besides, it’s not like her clothes aren't that nice anyway. Clarke keeps her tank top on too, but loses her pants, and Madi's not going to tell anyone, but she definitely catches Bellamy checking out Clarke's legs before she jumps in the water. 

So they're going to be fine here, too. They just might need a little more time.

Madi can tell it's not a normal day for them. This is a bunch of grown-ups putting their lives aside for a moment, out of respect to her. It feels like another moment stolen from the other Madi, but she's probably going to have a good day too. All she has to do is tell someone to call the other Clarke, and then she’ll come, and probably Bellamy too, and they’ll get ice cream and find a dog to pet.

The other Madi is still going to have a good day, and she'll probably be coming back to a better life. One with more friends and allies. She probably will have gotten to know Bellamy a little too. They aren't exactly the same guy, but at least she'll have an idea of him.

It’s going to be okay for both of them.

"What did you do when you were in my world?" Madi asks Clarke, as she drifts on her back in the water.

"Nothing," says Clarke, with a wistful tone. "Watched TV, ate good food, saw some other friends. It was nice. She casts around for Bellamy. "What about you? What did you do?"

"Grocery shopping and a museum."

She laughs. "Really?"

"What?"

"Was that your idea?"

"No, it was what you thought I'd like." He pauses. "Not the groceries, that just needed to get done.”

"Was it good?"

"The museum was better than the groceries." He pauses, like he's making up his mind about something. "But honestly, as soon as she told me you were alive, all I wanted to do was get back here and find you."

"You did," says Clarke.

His gaze is intent enough that Madi has to look away, like she's seeing something she shouldn't. Another moment that's not for her, not any version of her.

"I did," he says, and Madi smiles as she swims away.

*

They go back to the rover and eat dinner, which is just more dried fruit and nuts, with a little tough jerky on the side. Bellamy and the others have rations of their own, which they offer to share, but those look even worse than Clarke's. 

It's too risky to set up a fire, even if the Eligius people still aren't nearby to see it, so Clarke puts her arm around Madi once it starts getting cool, and it _is_ kind of nice. It's hard to imagine what her life would have been like if she had someone like Clarke to take care of her right after she lost her parents, but she thinks it would have been better.

She has a Clarke _now_ , though. And her Clarke does seem to want to keep her. She'd been having a little trouble believing it, but they _are_ pretty similar, her Clarke and this one. Maybe they're both going to take care of their Madis.

"Do you have any good stories from the Ark?" Clarke asks Bellamy. "Something to tell us before bed. It sounded like the bunker would give us nightmares."

"Definitely," says Miller. "Let's skip those."

Bellamy taps his jaw. "There was the time Raven fixed the ship's speakers and Murphy was so annoying she shut them down again in the first twenty-four hours."

"We needed a DJ!" says Murphy. "I didn't see anyone else stepping up to do the job."

Bellamy and Murphy make a good storytelling team, Bellamy handling the basic facts while Murphy interjects with asides and defenses. That turns into Echo calling Bellamy out for apparently taking the job wheel way too seriously, and it's all fun until Madi catches the wistful expression on Clarke's face, right as Bellamy does.

He's the one to shift closer, brushing his shoulder against Clarke's. Madi moves away without thinking about it, not wanting to interfere.

"Sorry,” Bellamy murmurs to Clarke, low.

She shakes her head, as if she's clearing her thoughts out. "It's okay. I'm glad you guys were okay up there."

"You know I would have been down here if I could have."

"You would have been in the bunker." She smiles. "You don't have to apologize. I wouldn't have been anywhere but here. I had Madi."

Bellamy puts his arm around Clarke's shoulders, hesitant until she leans into him, and then he looks over at Madi. "You didn’t have to leave, you know.”

She scoots closer to Clarke, and Clarke tugs her in again. It feels like a future that might be coming for her, this little family unit, these people who really might keep her.

When she wakes up the next morning, she feels even more sure of it, because she's in what is, without a doubt, Clarke's bedroom, wearing one of Clarke's t-shirts as a nightgown. They came and got her and took care of her, just like she knew they would. She's not used to depending on people without them letting her down, but they really might not.

There's a clean pair of clothes on Clarke's desk chair, and a note: _Madi, Welcome back! If we're not awake, help yourself to food. Bellamy's giving you a ride to school at eight. All the paperwork is set, you don't need to worry about getting in trouble._

It's sweet, but also, as it turns out, totally unnecessary--she gets changed and goes into the kitchen to find them both up, Clarke at the table with a cup of coffee and Bellamy at the stove, working on pancakes.

"You get up early enough to cook breakfast before eight?" she asks Bellamy, and he shrugs.

"Special occasion. How are you doing? How was the post-apocalypse?"

"Scary," she admits. "But nothing bad happened. We laid low, went swimming. You guys found each other again."

"Yeah? I knew we were going looking for her."

"Well, you found her. And you guys were working on a plan to get back to everyone else."

"Cool. The other you was going to tell Clarke where everyone else was, but this saves her the trouble." He puts a pancake in front of Madi. "Seriously, are you okay?"

"Yeah." She looks down at the plate, sending all her goodwill and love to her other self, the other Clarke and Bellamy. To Murphy and Miller and Echo, who made sure she was taken care of, to Bellamy's sister and Clarke’s mom, who she never even met. To the entire other world, covered in scars, with one bright spot of green. "I think they're going to be okay," she says, firm, and Clarke smiles like she can read Madi's mind.

"Yeah. I think so too."


End file.
